What's the best way subtitle a film I got on DVD?

Question

I was hired to subtitle several films. They were given to me on DVDs, and I am supposed to deliver on DVD. Originally I was going to use mpeg streamclip to make the files into a QT file, and the subtitle them in FCP.
I have been reading that you can subtitle in DVD Studio Pro, though. Would that be better? How would I do it.
Also, if anyone has a favorite font size/style to use for subtitling, please let me know. ANy other hints about creating appealing, easy to read titles would be appreciated.

Answer 1

Mr. RedTruck has some very good suggestions.
I'll try to add a bit to that:
Creating subtitles is about timing/shortening/translation. You'll be fighting with that so much that you will not have time to even think about the looks or TV output. The only thing that is important during 99% of the work is concentrate on words and readability. What you are doing is creating metadata, that will be used later on for final outut (in whatever form).
As for the looks, during the translation process you only set the linebreak and perhaps add italic words.
So before you begin you pick a 'look'(font/size/color)
Next you need to know how much you can fit on a line, so you know your limitations in length/when to split text into two titles.
Do not underestimate the struggle when you have to fit a written translation into the time it's spoken.
A title comes on the moment somebody speaks, and goes off when he shuts up.
Basic rule of thumb, when the text is easy to understand, you have to be able to read it OUT LOUD in that duration. That almost always means shortening the text, while maintaining the original content as good as possible.
This is what makes the difference. If you do it right, people will not notice the subtitles, and think they can understand the language by themselves.
If you are going out of sync or put in too much text to read in the short time the titles are on, or break up titles on non-logical places, viewers will find it a bad translation (even if it is perfect) and will be annoyed.
If you have more than a few titles to do, forget about DVD SP.
You need to be able to type your translation and listen to the movie at the same time.
Forget about FCP for the same reason. It's just not fast enough.
There is dedicated software to do this, one application written by me:
http://www.videotoolshed.com/?page=products&pID=12
No, it is not cheap, and yes, it will take you some time to master it.
But it has all the options to create all kind of subtitles, and more important, once you are getting the hang of it, you will be at least 5 times more productive than using free tools (those are around as well).
Last but not least, it comes with very good support
You were talking about 'several films'.
I don't know how long they are, and how much of it must be subtitled, but some statistics:
A one hour movie has some 600 subtitles. That takes a trained professioal subtitler way more than a day to create just the subtitle file (containing text with timing info). So i hope you know what you're in for.
Again, getting from there to the final output is nothing compared to the effort to create the translation/timing.
hth
Bouke
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